Fight the Blues
by The Blearing Phoenix
Summary: -a series of drabbles relating to a plethora of atla characters in a variety of amusing, squeal-worthy situations.- -1st atla fic
1. Fight the Blues

what's it called

**what's it called? **_Fight the Blues _

**who's it about?** zuko x toph (('cause some nameless authors got me into the pairing. plus i have a thing for au's.))

**what is it?** Total crazy crack!pairing thing that i did at 12:13 am

**genre(s)? **Some crazy romantic/humorous/general/dramatic/angsty thing. Yeah, I can never settle on more than two genres.

You'll love it, honestly.

**warning- **There will be run-on sentences and some swearing and some angst and stuff. There will also be awkward fluff and i'll apologize a million times if zuko or toph are ooc. It's my first avatar fic and it's been a while since I've seen the show.

Fight the Blues

By The Blearing Phoenix

Her blood drifts out into streamlets of crimson, streaking across like paint. Toph hisses quick and drawn as the flame sears her skin, shrivels it black and marred. Her skin is ugly and she hates him, smirking with a red mark of dishonor on his face. She tenses, muscles drawn, contracting and compressing and drawing together before she channels all of her weariness and frustration into her bending. 'Cause the earth is on her feet and she can control it and feel its pulsations--feel it riffling through her calloused feet. Aang whips by her a blur of sunny orange and he's on his ball of air, picking up dry brittle dead leaves, spinning them around like they're his own personal carousel. Toph's got the ex-prince on her mind though as she hurls a boulder at him, feeling the recoil, feeling the wind whip at her and smack her forearms like invisible belts.

_ I live for this _- The girl thinks and she senses Zuko's movement, feels the steady tensing of his muscles as he arches his right leg and relaxes it. Red scorches her and heat wraps around her like a fiery ribbon, licking away and Toph hisses again. Withdrawing back to narrow her pallid eyes she pivots none too gracefully, kneels down, scraping skin--ashen & epidermal and then rises up too quick so that she barely feels the sticky red stuff sloughing off of her leg. _Blood's so gooey _- and so she pushes this off of her rotary mind and hurls another boulder at him.

"Damn it!" he swears and she laughs coarsely because she's an independent little brat and she doesn't _care_. She feels triumphant, happiness releasing itself as if it were a caged canary flitting about freely now in her heart. She swells and feels the scorching torridity sweep across her gooseflesh and for once she feels like she's on cloud nine--amazingly. (yeah he'll be gone soon) She hopes and fidgets in her too-big green shorts but then Toph is confident Toph again, sensing an opening where the wind whooshed across Zuko's back as he flipped over to the right. She spins around, twisting her wrist, hearing a faint crack of osseous and then she dismisses it because pain is good for the learning process (she's such a tomboy, yup). The boulder cracks and breaks skin and Zuko's breath tightens--controlled in his immured chest before he lets out all shakily and he smirks confidently.

"You're not gonna win that easily!" and he hurls a fireball at her, whirling with red flames, spinning with ferociousness, living with his wickedness as its very core--its very heart. Toph swings agilely and lands on a ruin, loving the feel of dirt and solidness and then she becomes a spinning little thing--blasting out rocks and dust and air. Zuko arches back, grunts as his tendons and ligaments and sinewy muscles pulls--as his very blood rushes and rages through his tanned skin. Katara's probably berating Sokka for raiding their bagged 'pantry' because Toph picks up the growing cries of the goofy Water Tribe boy and she really love them--she realizes. Aang's tending to Appa now--feeing the gentle furry beast some sort of green shrubbery. _. . .Focus now though, 'cause he's got me but I know I won't lose! Still I gotta focus!_ - Toph feels cruel though because she hurls boulder after boulder and she hears the scraping of feet against stone. Aang and the others are coming—watching observing and chattering and making the air buzz around her with their urgent voices.

"--Come on Toph!"

"--Sokka don't encourage them--it's just a practice fight, we don't want them getting carried away."

"--They won't--whoa that was a huge fireball, did you see that I mean whoa! Hey, be careful where you're aiming that, Fireboy!"

Zuko scowls, Toph can sense the tugging of his lips--bloodless cause he's stretching his skin too tight and he ignores Sokka's sarcasm--his dry wit doesn't cut into the boy's mental armor at all. Toph slams down her hands, palms stinging on the warm ground and then she raises it up swiftly. Feeling her body tense and buckle inward, she steadies herself; Toph breathes in, hears silly Master Yu's voice in her head, and then nods conspiratorially to herself before she lets her trusty rock fly. Zuko swings his head towards her ashen-hued hair tickling his unmarred cheek but he draws in the breath too slowly, marvels at it all dumbfounded, and barely drags his body back as the rock knocks him back and the air comes out of him in a great column of invisible puffs.

Katara fusses and prattles and berates and heals with her cool fingertips brushing against their singed and bruised and mottled skin. Zuko laughs bitterly as he sips some jasmine tea and sees Iroh in his eyes and feels his warmth and he reminds himself that he'll see him soon once this crap is over. Toph sits up, winces as she bends her arm and realizes that the flames had torn and shredded and destroyed cartilage yet she still laughs--throatily and cutely all at once. _What a fight . . . I bet Uncle would be impressed' - y_et Zuko looks around him at Aang's laughing brown eyes and Sokka who was trying to sneak off some of the recently purchased steaming Sea Slug from the wooden birch bowl. Momo gurgled and tucked himself into Aang's warm billowing orange cloth, feeling safe from the prying curious eyes of the world.

_ I don't need to force out forgiveness from these people. I burned their homes, their dreams, their hopes . . .,_' Zuko's throat burned and felt dry and scratched as if something clawed had attacked it and he felt detached. For some reason Azula's face sprang into his mind like a distorted image and her cheshire grin sprung up with her white pointed canines, glistening, and her amber eyes all flinty. _I hate her, I hate dad, and I hate my sister, they're all dishonorable and I can change this. I'm not here to make friends, I'm here to help the Avatar stop this bloodshed,'_ and with that Zuko excused himself--a mumble because he wasn't used to being this civil and he feels himself get all dizzy. The ecru-hued walls of the room look dark and blurred and everyone's just blobs and then pain shoots up like flaming arrows burning and hot and white and searing and--crap it hurts!

Then they're all scrambling and Zuko laughs, blood spurting from his lips and Toph's eyes are all blank 'till he stupidly remembers that she's blind but she looks almost remorseful--almost. Katara's there though telling Aang to fetch blankets and Sokka's telling Toph that, ". . . your huge ass boulder just really knocked him out cold, man!". Everyone's buzzing and droning and chattering like busy harried bees and Zuko feels annoyed for some odd reason because for once he doesn't like being pampered but the pain's still white-hot shooting up into his veins where it becomes icy and then dulls like a flickering flame. Then he's laid out on a cot and Katara's hands work its magic coolness and her fingertips prod and the tendrils of liquid revive him and slowly seal up his shredded corded muscles. Toph watches for an eternity and her laughs die away in her throat until she collapses back ungracefully ((she's such a darn tomboy)) unto the thin sienna-toned blanket of a mat.

The cushions are too hard and they sort of dig into Zuko's skin and he feels feverish--with sweat beading like little transparent pearls on his waxy skin. His lips are dry and he tastes saltiness on his tongue and he laughs and laughs until he hacks because Zuko swears that this is crazy. The little Earthbender girl practically beat the snot out of him with her hands tied behind her back. Someone with a kind motherly voice shoves slug into his mouth and he mumbles out, "Mom?" and Sokka laughs and Aang says, "You've been getting that a lot Katara." Then Zuko wonders how the hell he even ended up on their side so fast anyway--five weeks ago Katara was threatening to end his destiny and here she was treating him like -- Zuko gulped feeling the foreign thought like a poisonous barb--like a brother.

"Sorry I beat the crap out of you Fireboy but I just _can't _lose." Toph doesn't even bother knocking as she glides in, tattered robes dragging like snakes across the floor and Zuko feels like there's something mocking in her tone yet he's too tired to trace it.

"Whatever, I'll be fine in a few days. Pfft, you need to brush up anyway, that counterattack was so sloppy," And then there they were criticizing each other's weaknesses and complimenting each other's strengths. Toph kept on picking out the threads of his mat and Zuko felt comforted knowing that the rest of the gang were slumbering in their respective tents. Toph scraped her nails against the earth and looked nowhere but he could sense a tugging and prickling sensation within his heart as if her small fingers were prodding there--urging his disgusting filthy secrets out.

"Your sister's annoying," Toph finally says and Zuko looks up almost widening his eyes before the shock registers within him and sinks back into the corners of his battered body.

"I know," he can see Toph shift in the warm sunlight and her face looks tanned in the darkness and her eyes are alight with something akin to curiosity. Zuko thinks that the Earthbender is like the annoying competitive sister he never had and he wonders if he could've ever had the heart to just beat her up five weeks ago. _I never would've she's too much--to much like me -_ Zuko suddenly feels his tongue getting loose, he lets the water that Katara had prepared for him trickle down the parched column of his throat and he never felt so greedy for the liquid until now. Toph listens intently as he pours out how his mother, Ursa had committed all kinds of treacherous and deceitful things just to keep him alive. How Ursa had been exiled from the kingdom by his own father, Ozai--how Ozai was a power-hungry bastard that had felt that Azula was and always would be superior to Zuko.

"So basically your father's a bastard? That's lovely. I know what it's like though you know--," and Zuko sees it and feels it and breathes in the bitterness in her tone and feels as if he's stepped into her small dirt-caked shoes for fifteen times during his life.

_ We're like soul mates . . . how ironic and odd. _- That was all that Zuko could think about until Toph peeled back the inner layers of her insecurities--how she never felt she was as beautiful as the other maidens in the world because of her blindness, how her parents thought that her severe myopia was a weakness, how she had always tried to defy them because of how strict they were . . . Zuko was shocked at the numerous similarities and he somehow ended up coiled around her, sleeping and enveloping the unloved and yet loved girl with his warmth as she sucked him in with each inhale and drew him out with her exhales. She was powerful and so was he . . .

**a/n**: more to come soon. yes this will be a series of drabbles. whew, i kinda like how this came out, sorry if they're ooc, suggestions to improve that would be awesome. thanks for reading, if you did!


	2. The One Who Loves Power

**The One Who Loves Power**

By The Blearing Phoenix

And when she wants to, Azula notes she can twist and turn her little fingers inside Zuko's brain. She can toss Mai over to him with her wan milky skin and her lifeless amber eyes. She can and she will ((Because Azula just knows cruelty)). She can jab into him until he trembles and then she can laugh mirthlessly like she has barbed wire lining the rim of her throat ((Because she just knows how to make them writhe)). Zuko can be her puppet and she can be the puppeteer and steer him towards that twisting maelstrom all sickening with the sleek greenness of victory that's tainted with the red blood of murder. She can and she will.

One pin goes into her straight black hair and her tendrils loop and loop as the steady white hands of her maid moves adroitly, briskly, as if she's done this in her sleep. '_Zuko you can run but you can't hide, you know. No, you never can because I'll. Always. Find. You.' _Azula's thoughts are evil splinters of exploitation and duplicity—evil thoughts that Ozai would smile at her for and embrace her in his cold warmth for. At the simple ruminations of '_Father . . . father will want me to take up his throne,' _Azula feels elated in her ascension—in the knowledge that she'll be next in line to purify the Fire Nation and conquer the world. Her red robes fold over like overlapping waves and she sees her reflection—her flinty fiery eyes with whorls of passionate red and white all at once satisfying her.

Azula rises, thanks her maid and watches the dainty girl saunter off--back aligned with her body and her limbs moving like fluid liquid—graceful and smooth.

Azula can manipulate Mai and she can manipulate that foolish acrobatic girl—the one she so nonchalantly identifies as 'friend' but she stiffly and staunchly reminds herself that she, Azula has no room for friends. '_Look what happened to Zhao when he became your friend—he died—he failed. Friends will just wheedle their way into your heart and betray you. They're all stupid!' _Passing her hand over the red wooden table, pressing her slim fingers into the neat geometric holes, Azula imagines father smiling at her with such lovely heartwarming pride. Father will welcome her and love her with that cold warmth if only . . . if only she can do this one thing and become Fire Lord—if only.

Azula can twist and turn her little fingers inside Zuko's brain. She can make her elder brother writhe and scream with blood bubbling up in his abdomen—making his skin burn fire-hot. She can and she will and as she realizes this—reminds herself of this ability, she smiles with that fire present in her eyes and with that electricity crackling under her fingertips.

**a.n. – **Azula's cool to write. This drabble takes place a little while after the events of the 'Boiling Rock' episode. Just thought, that I should clarify it for those that might be confused. Oh yeah, and this is going to be drabbles about all of the characters and all of their relationships with one another. I really can't resist writing Aang now, I probably should. Whee.


	3. She Moves Like The Waves, They Say

**They Say That She Moves Like the Waves**

By The Blearing Phoenix

Katara took it all out of herself; she pushed it out of her very shell. She exerted herself until she breathed it out in one long uneven stream of breath. Shifting her weight unto the ball of her left foot, she twirled around and caught herself as the air pushed her back. Katara leaned into the very sphere of it, and watched as flecks of her curly chocolate tendrils settled against the crook of her collarbone. A whip of liquid unfurled as she flexed her fingers, felt the smooth bone pop and she hissed as the tiny shards of pain dissolved like wisps of smoke. Zuko flashed through her mind, his mark of dishonor, his ash-hued hair all chopped messily and his three-day old stubble that tickled her cheek as she spun over him--all of this stuck in her mind.

_'How can they all believe him and confide in him so well? Can't they see that he's a traitor!?'_ Her anger came out in the form of a whirling bubble that she lashed out against the earth, seeing chinks and specks of rock land in a small scattered ring around her. Her feet prickled but she ignored the sharp jabs of soreness that dominated and traveled along the soles of her bare feet. Muttering a curse in a rather unladylike manner, Katara wondered how Toph could even walk around barefoot like this all of the time. The Waterbender told herself to focus though and so she braced herself and rooted her feet into the irritating, prickling bits of rock, hissing as slivers of skin were punctured and torn.

Katara remembered how Zuko had almost burned Toph's feet how he'd almost singed her own hair this morning because he had thought that she was an enemy. Frowning at her split ends, Katara sniffed and caught the faint smell of burned hair, before she spun around, catching the pull of the small babbling streamlet. She pulled it away from the earth, waved it over the small rocks and hurled it against the rock, feeling her anger slowly ebb away.

'_Who's to say that Zuko won't just betray us again and go running back to his sister . . . who's to say . . .that he can be trusted to easily?' _Katara almost flinched as she felt a wetness trickle down her mocha-toned skin, it slid down where it terminated near her chin, where the tear died. Huffing out air, Katara felt the tightness in her chest cavity lessen as she plopped down wearily on the ground. The water calmed down as she whirled it back into its area near the gaping cavern. Above her she could see the canopy—an endless mass of bottle-green leaves that let shafts of sunny-orange light through.

A flash of red, green, blue, and smudged orange dominated her vision. Aang frowned disdainfully at her, his brown eyes losing that childlike obliviousness that normally lived within his light eyes.

"Whoa, sis what the heck got into you?! You went all psycho! When you said cool down I thought you meant that you'd do some silent 'Ohm' meditations. I never expected you to-to—," Sokka temporarily forgot the one word that he was looking for as he stared at the hollow of Earth that the infuriated Waterbender was currently sitting in.

"You never expected Sugar Queen to go and mess up the lovely scenery, right? Well, for one thing she certainly doesn't waste time letting us know that she's pissed." Toph remarked cattily.

"Gotta agree with you there. Listen Ka--," Zuko winced and quickly moved his head out of the way as an icicle shard whizzed by his ear, barely nicking the shell of it. Feeling the steady rise of heat in his chest, spreading out like tendrils against his very bones, Zuko suppressed the urge to burn Katara to a crisp. If the girl was going to be such a grumpy ass then he could be one too.

"Fine if you don't want to accept my humble apologies, then you can go ahead and be a grump about it! See if I care!"

"_You_—" Katara rose up feeling the sting of indignation and – How dare he use such a defiant tone with her—she prodded an ice-cool forefinger into his chest not even wincing as Sokka's hands tried to grip her sides. Pushing her elder brother away, Katara leapt at Zuko and pinned him to the ground with her dainty spidery fingers. Aang spun around, staff gripped tightly in his hand, and somewhere Katara could hear the faint gurgle of Momo as if the creature was voicing his own disappointment with her actions. Somehow, Katara just got angrier and she huffed like an angry dragon as a wave of air knocked her own breath out of her and gently pushed her away from the snarling face of the exiled prince.

"STOP!" Aang's voice made her calm down only for a moment and she watched him through wet bangs as she straightened her blue dress but it was all to no avail—moments later wrinkles formed as she rolled out the kink in her hipbone.

"Way to go Twinkletoes, you got the two lovebirds to stop fighting!" Toph smirked and Sokka looked like his eyes were about to come out of his sockets as he let that harmless comment sink into his processing mind.

"You both need to work with us if we're ever going to take down Ozai. Katara we need to go to the market so I suggest that you and Zuko settle this AFTER the war. Right now, we're all starving. I have Appa all ready to fly so can we _please _go now?" Aang looked almost hopeful, the starry light in his eyes, the very toothy smile that he gave exuded happiness and hopefulness that only Katara could dream of and admire.

"I'm sorry that I did this. Whew, I guess I got a little carried away. We can go now," with that Katara shouldered the offered taupe-hued knapsack and let out a few spurts of water that resonated with soft healing blue light. She felt the discomfort sink in as she settled on Appa behind Zuko and she held her breath as she felt his warmth descending on her gooseflesh.

"Relax Sugar Queen, you have your boyfriend with you to keep you company," Toph piped up from beside the Firebender and she casually flicked a pebble unto Sokka's shoulder just to aggravate the Earthbender.

"Toph?"

"Why yes Waterboy?" Katara couldn't help but let out a good-natured chortle but she almost bit it back as Zuko's singsong laugh accompanied her own. Almost until she discovered that she kind of liked the sound of his deep voice and then she felt like berating herself. '_Oh boy . . .I do not have a crush on Zuko—I don't!' _Yet Katara couldn't fight down the reddening pink that warmed her soft cheeks and she blushed even harder when Sokka gave Toph a knowing smile--then realization dawned on the Watertribe boy's face as another pebble connected with his skull. Toph almost flinched as she felt the heat rise in Sokka's cheeks and he rounded on her, his startling blue eyes twitching.

"STOP flicking pebbles at me!"

"Why Sokka I don't know what you're talking about?" Toph replied, feigning girlish innocence.

"—darn well know what I mean?"

"—stop being such a sissy about it, Bub!"

"We're almost there, guys!" Aang called out and Momo who'd leapt unto his master's shoulder let out a soft mewl of comfort. Below them earthy clay houses and ribbons of smooth flowing water cut into the green waving grass. Katara hoped that they could land soon because she couldn't really take the fact that she liked feeling Zuko's chest rise and fall and she liked seeing his brow twitch whenever he got agitated at her. She couldn't help but feel that she got more blown up over his antics than necessary because she loved seeing him angry—because it oddly fueled her and stirred something within her. '_Please land, please land, please!! I don't want to be near that exasperating, ugly, _((You know he's cute, Katara, don't deny it!))_ hotheaded,_ ((You're just as hotheaded, which is reason #2 as to why you like him oh so much!)) _ba-_' Her own thoughts were defying her conscience . . . stupid conscience.

**a/n: **This turned out longer than I thought. Hee-hee I love writing about Katara's obvious de-ni-al about her LOVEOMGZ! for Zuko. Toph x Sokka love! I know that this was Zutara but I promise I'll do some Kataang for all of you Katara x Aang fans out there!

Peace and love to all those who read, TBP!


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